Hunting humpbacks

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The International Whaling Commission introduced a ban on commercial humpback whaling in 1966, which is still in force. The exception is a few taken off the Caribbean island Bequia in the nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Estimates are that at least 200 000 humpbacks were killed during the 20th Century, reducing the global population by more than 90%. Japan had planned to restart hunting in 2007, but the IWC talked them out of it...temporarily.

Happily, there is no moratorium on hunting them with a camera, so I went to Hervey Bay armed with a Nikon D-SLR and a JVC camcorder.

Early in the morning I boarded the Blue Dolphin catamaran with about 20 others and we sailed out along the eastern coast of Fraser Island to look for them. A catamaran has advantages and disadvantages. Of the latter, speed is the greatest problem. If you see whales from a long way off, you might not reach them, whereas power boats will. The sea was a little choppy out in the bay, so when we did see whales it wasn't always easy to photograph them.

We followed a pod for several hours - a female, a calf and two juvenile males. They went up and down endlessly, showing a bit of back and dorsal fin, the occasional fluke but not much else. No breaching or other aquabatics. Around noon we found another pod - female and calf - and it was more of the same. They might as well have been animated grey icebergs. On the horizon we saw the big, white splashes of a whale breaching over and over, but it was too far away to consider trying to get there in time to see anything.

We ate sandwiches for lunch and kept following the whales until mid-afternoon. A lone male approached our pod and we waited eagerly for some breaching - a bit of male courtship, showing off the flukes, so to speak - but nothing came of it and the female and calf simply swam away.

We were now a long way from the marina at Hervey Bay and it was time to turn around and follow the sandy coast of Fraser Island home. On the way the captain hauled from a storage locker a whale vertebrae like a ship's propellor and smelly ambergris; you really have to wonder about the first person who thought of using whale puke for making perfume.

On my return I asked a girl for directions back to my hostel. I set off but only got a few steps before a guy in a car pulled up and asked where I was headed (I think he must have seen me asking for directions). I told him and he said me to jump in. It was only a 10-minute walk, so it was a two-minute drive, but it was helpful.

The next day I caught a city bus to the beach and spent the day there. Coming home, I got the same bus driver and he asked me So how was your day, buddy? It didn't seem to be an idle question but one that required more than just the word Fine, fine. So I told him a bit and it turned out to be a real conversation, not just the usual harmless exchange of pleasantries between two people who don't know and don't really care about each other.

This is friendly, small-town Australia and it's a real pleasure to encounter it. In grocery stores or restaurants they greet you with a How's your day been? a salutation far warmer and more welcoming than the simple, cold, distant Bonjour that you get in Switzerland and France. It's a refreshing informality that draws you immediately into the community that lives here rather than to hold you at arm's length, as in Europe. Canada is similar but I think Australians have a slight edge in the friendliness Olympics.

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Photos

Whale
This is what we saw most of the day...backs and dorsal fins.

Pod and lone male
On the left the male is displaying a fluke, so he's probably rolled half-way over in some underwater manoeuvre aimed at impressing the female just beside him.